


Cast A Cold Eye -- On Life -- On Death --

by Lanna Michaels (lannamichaels)



Category: Astronomy (Anthropomorfic), Solar System (Anthropomorfic)
Genre: Artistic License, Astronomy, Astrophysics, I'm Sorry Neil deGrasse Tyson, Overuse Of Parentheses, POV Second Person, Some Attempts At Science Were Made, Time - Freeform, Time Is A Big Ball Of Wibbly Wobbly Timey Wimey Stuff, Yuletide 2013
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-21
Updated: 2013-12-21
Packaged: 2018-01-05 10:21:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,191
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1092747
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lannamichaels/pseuds/Lanna%20Michaels
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dare to disturb the universe.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cast A Cold Eye -- On Life -- On Death --

**Author's Note:**

  * For [starduchess](https://archiveofourown.org/users/starduchess/gifts).



> Happy Yuletide, [](http://www.archiveofourown.org/users/starduchess/profile)**[starduchess](http://www.archiveofourown.org/users/starduchess/)**! Thanks to woggy for astronomy-picking this, and to searchingweasel for betaing an early draft. The title is from Under Ben Bulben by W. B. Yeats and the summary is referencing The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T. S. Eliot.
> 
> * * *
> 
> [Yuletide Reveal Meta Post](http://lannamichaels.dreamwidth.org/801458.html)

Once, there was an explosion.

Your atoms are born together in the center of the great gods. You form together. You are.

\---

You settle into an orbit. 

Wandering neighbors cross your path. You greet them. You make them welcome.

Some neighbors are ensnared by your gravity. When they reach you, they are torn apart. When they reach you, they collide. They fall into you. When they reach you, they become part of you.

One neighbor begins to fall, but doesn't. It accompanies you instead, settling into its new orbit. A new friend.

\---

You were not born alone, you were not formed alone. You have a twin.

You cannot forget it; you perturb its orbit. Gravity tugs, reminding you.

\---

Beyond your orbit are your small cousins and you remember them, too, and they are cold like you, frozen. They are like you and unlike you. They are harder; they have to be, to survive. They are smaller. The universe is always so dangerous for the small.

(You are small, too.)

\---

Some pass by. The comets, the asteroids, pebbles both. Some never return.

(Machines come.)

You speak with them. You give them messages. You have been missing your twin; your atoms miss its atoms. (You remember the beginning and you remember the end. Your birth and death are the same.)

Your messages for your twin: do you remember the early days? Do you remember our death? Twice we were together.

Your twin responds: my dear, we are always separate and always together. My dear, we are always one.

\---

You are not you, you are We. We are many, we are vast, deep, breathtaking. We combine together. 

We dance.

We are.

We are. So large.

And they are not they; they are you, and you are they. Larger beyond imagination.

Your twin reminds you: we are always one.

\---

They reach you. (All will reach you, or you will reach them -- you see no difference.)

\---

When they reach you, these small not-quite-rocks, these machines of metal, you recognize their atoms. They are strangers and not-strangers both. They are new things made of old things. (You are a new thing constantly being made of old things; you recognize yourself.)

These machines call you the last of the large, but your neighbors think you the first. They call you the boundary and you keep them safe. They are forever watching their friends stream out into the unknown and return, licking their wounds. (Some never return from the dark.) And you are still the one they fear when these new things start to leave, this metal they never saw enter, not in this form.

And these beaten metals, these machines, they come and see. They study you. 

(You study them.)

They are here to break the boundary open. They are here to find the unknown and know it. And they are small, like the comets, like the asteroids, like your moons. (Like you).

But all seems small in the dark.

\---

(It should not be dark.)

\---

You are going somewhere. You don't know where.

Even the other large gods, even the great star itself, all are pricks of light in dark. (Your atoms miss their atoms.) You can feel their gravity; you are never alone. None of you are alone, no matter how large, no matter how small. There can never be a boundary; you are all pushing each other into the unknown, all of you desperate to know it.

When you reach it -- you will reach it -- how will you know when you reach it? You all travel together -- how do you know where you are? -- how do we know? But we are going somewhere.

This is some journey in the dark, in your gravity, in your orbit, you are traveling into the unknown and becoming it. It's hard to see (you are not alone) and the journey hides itself.

Somewhere, there may be a boundary.

You (think you would) like to find it.

\---

It would make you seem very small. 

\---

You would like to meet them again, the stars. Their light reaches you; you watch it continue on.

The universe is most dangerous for the small, but the great star makes you small, and the great galaxy makes you small, and all the stars surrounding you, they make you small. One day the boundary between you (we) and they (us) will disappear again and you and they and we and us will combine, and you ( _you_ ) will disappear, subsumed, consumed.

(You are traveling towards this apocalypse.)

The dark will fade into fire, you will become the unknown.

And until then, you are small.

\---

When you reach this place --

you and your solar system,

you and your galaxy,

you and your moons, and your gas and your metals and your ice, you and these machines,

\-- when you reach this place you are going:

maybe it will be dark.

\---

Darkness is a boundary where light has not been.

\---

The universe expands.

\---

Comets pass you by. Asteroids pass you by.

You tell them, we are on a journey. They will be different when they return. What they'll return to will be different from when they left it. Nothing is the same.

But they will recognize its atoms.

\---

The comets.

The asteroids.

The machines.

They all wonder what they will reach when they pass you.

\---

What have you seen in the vast emptiness, what have you seen and forgotten and seen again, how long was it this time, tell me of its gravity, of its mass, of its orbit. Tell me of its impacts. Tell me of everything that went wrong.

Tell me of collisions, tell me of disasters, tell me of fire.

Tell me of the universe.

(Those that crash into you, those that become you, you are always having been them and they are always having been you.)

(Your twin reminds you: journeys are all orbits.)

\---

Maybe it will be dark.

Maybe it is collapsing even now.

Maybe it is expanding even now.

Maybe the journey has already ended.

\---

From far away, everything is lights in the dark. Approaching you, leaving you behind. (When they reach you, you greet them. When they reach you, all are changed.)

All are light at first, at the last. The lights of the comets, the lights of the machines. Always, some never return; you never see their lights again.

But you will see their atoms again. (You have already seen them again.) (You have already become them.)

\---

Nothing ever happens only once.

\---

You are going somewhere, orbiting something so dark and vast, light cannot escape its boundary. But it is going there, too.

You will collide with another galaxy; the two will become one. Everything that meets you is changed. Everything that meets you, changes you.

(Nothing remains the same.)

\---

They are obedient to their natures -- the comets, the asteroids, the machines -- obedient to forces they cannot control or imagine -- obedient to their journeys. Traveling in the vast reaches of space -- when they reach you -- you ask: what are you seeking. What is your journey. What will you find. What do you seek to prove.

_

And the machines respond: "Space is no boundary."

_


End file.
